"Either get rid of the nutter (and from what I have read you actually are the person who should be in charge), or leave, or I won't buy your books any more."
Then you'd better plan on not buying my books for several months. I paid my yearly dues today, and while I would be delighted to have the particular person who did this resign (and indeed many people have suggested this should be what happens), I don't see it happening any time soon, since he's not inclined to do so (it would help if he actually believed he did something wrong) nor do I believe two-thirds of SFWAns will recall him, more's the pity.
That said, SFWA President and VP slots are up for election on a yearly basis, and it seems unlikely that this particular officer will get an extension past the next election and installation of new officers, which happens on July 1st. So your purchasing hiatus will likely only need to be ten months long. In the meantime, I suggest the library.
This is posted on the SFWA Web site here. It's from Michael Capobianco, President of SFWA.
I want to respond to the flurry of activity that has resulted from Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) mistakenly identifying several works as infringing copyright. First, some background. There have been discussions within SFWA for several months regarding websites that allow users to upload documents of all sorts for other users to download and share. Many hundreds of copyrighted texts have been put online at these sites, and the number is growing quickly. Some SFWA members complained about the pirating of their works to SFWA's e-Piracy Committee and authorized the committee to do something about it. SFWA contacted scribd.com, one of these sites, about removing these authors' works and generated a list of infringing works to be removed.
Unfortunately, this list was flawed and the results were not checked. At least three works tagged as copyright infringements were nothing of the sort. I have personally apologized to the writers and editors of those works. If you are a creator who has had material removed and has not yet been contacted, please email me at president@sfwa.org.
SFWA's intention was to remove from scribd.com only works copyrighted by SFWA members who had authorized SFWA to act on their behalf. This kind of error will not happen again.
This suggests that every member of SFWA supports what's happened. Since I'm a member of SFWA (indeed, I ran for president of the organization earlier this year and lost), and have access to their private boards and have seen the carnage there, I can tell you authoritatively: It's not even remotely true.
Speaking for myself, I think every author has a right to say how their work should be used and displayed. I also think that this particular maneuver was pretty dumb.
Punishing every member of SFWA because of a jackassed maneuver by one of its officers is like punishing every American because Dick Cheney is busily taking a squat on the Constitution. In both cases, the executive in question does not represent the views of every member.
"In spite of this being an author who is (apparently) pro-ebooks, you can't find much of his published work in that format."
Well, there is that entire novel of mine (Agent to the Stars) that has been freely available on the Web since 1999. And as noted by other folks, Old Man's War and The Ghost Brigades are both slated to be part of that Tor/Baen thing. So all the novels I currently have in print either are or will (reasonably) soon be in e-book format. My non-fiction work is not readily available in the format, I will admit, but I'm working on that for my reference books.
"I can't comment on how good Rhapsody is since I've never met anyone who used it."
I've subscribed to Rhapsody for a couple of years now, and I actually love it.
I think it matters what you use it for, however. I don't use streaming audio as a replacement for music I own, I use it to listen to stuff I want to see if I *want* to buy, or if I want to listen to a track a friend recommends for a listen. If I like it, then I'll buy it through other means (Rhapsody has an application that allows you to burn tracks to a CD, but I've never been able to figure out how to use it and in any event it seems a silly way to do things).
Rhapsody has also been extremely useful for me in a business sense. I write a lot of articles about music and Rhapsody allows me the ability to pull down a song or album and listen to it without incurring the additional cost of having to buy the album or otherwise hunt for a particular track. I recently did an article on songs with the word "Detriot" in their titles, for example -- I went onto Rhapsody, used their search engine, and then had a universe of 70 or so tunes to work with. As a reference library of music, it certainly justifies the $10 a month I spend on it.
I don't think anyone should confuse a service like Rhapsody for being the same thing as owning music, and I don't; I still buy the music I want to buy. But as a highly configurable personal radio and sampling station, it's been a useful engine of music acquisition and sampling -- I spend more time *exploring* music because it's cheap and easy to do so. In terms of computer applications that are actually relevant to my life on a daily basis, it's in the top five.
The question of interest is: Will I still use Rhapsody if/when iTunes starts a streaming subscription service?
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Then you'd better plan on not buying my books for several months. I paid my yearly dues today, and while I would be delighted to have the particular person who did this resign (and indeed many people have suggested this should be what happens), I don't see it happening any time soon, since he's not inclined to do so (it would help if he actually believed he did something wrong) nor do I believe two-thirds of SFWAns will recall him, more's the pity.
That said, SFWA President and VP slots are up for election on a yearly basis, and it seems unlikely that this particular officer will get an extension past the next election and installation of new officers, which happens on July 1st. So your purchasing hiatus will likely only need to be ten months long. In the meantime, I suggest the library.
I want to respond to the flurry of activity that has resulted from Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) mistakenly identifying several works as infringing copyright. First, some background. There have been discussions within SFWA for several months regarding websites that allow users to upload documents of all sorts for other users to download and share. Many hundreds of copyrighted texts have been put online at these sites, and the number is growing quickly. Some SFWA members complained about the pirating of their works to SFWA's e-Piracy Committee and authorized the committee to do something about it. SFWA contacted scribd.com, one of these sites, about removing these authors' works and generated a list of infringing works to be removed.
Unfortunately, this list was flawed and the results were not checked. At least three works tagged as copyright infringements were nothing of the sort. I have personally apologized to the writers and editors of those works. If you are a creator who has had material removed and has not yet been contacted, please email me at president@sfwa.org.
SFWA's intention was to remove from scribd.com only works copyrighted by SFWA members who had authorized SFWA to act on their behalf. This kind of error will not happen again.
Michael Capobianco
President, SFWA
This suggests that every member of SFWA supports what's happened. Since I'm a member of SFWA (indeed, I ran for president of the organization earlier this year and lost), and have access to their private boards and have seen the carnage there, I can tell you authoritatively: It's not even remotely true.
Speaking for myself, I think every author has a right to say how their work should be used and displayed. I also think that this particular maneuver was pretty dumb.
Punishing every member of SFWA because of a jackassed maneuver by one of its officers is like punishing every American because Dick Cheney is busily taking a squat on the Constitution. In both cases, the executive in question does not represent the views of every member.
"In spite of this being an author who is (apparently) pro-ebooks, you can't find much of his published work in that format."
Well, there is that entire novel of mine (Agent to the Stars) that has been freely available on the Web since 1999. And as noted by other folks, Old Man's War and The Ghost Brigades are both slated to be part of that Tor/Baen thing. So all the novels I currently have in print either are or will (reasonably) soon be in e-book format. My non-fiction work is not readily available in the format, I will admit, but I'm working on that for my reference books.
"I can't comment on how good Rhapsody is since I've never met anyone who used it." I've subscribed to Rhapsody for a couple of years now, and I actually love it. I think it matters what you use it for, however. I don't use streaming audio as a replacement for music I own, I use it to listen to stuff I want to see if I *want* to buy, or if I want to listen to a track a friend recommends for a listen. If I like it, then I'll buy it through other means (Rhapsody has an application that allows you to burn tracks to a CD, but I've never been able to figure out how to use it and in any event it seems a silly way to do things). Rhapsody has also been extremely useful for me in a business sense. I write a lot of articles about music and Rhapsody allows me the ability to pull down a song or album and listen to it without incurring the additional cost of having to buy the album or otherwise hunt for a particular track. I recently did an article on songs with the word "Detriot" in their titles, for example -- I went onto Rhapsody, used their search engine, and then had a universe of 70 or so tunes to work with. As a reference library of music, it certainly justifies the $10 a month I spend on it. I don't think anyone should confuse a service like Rhapsody for being the same thing as owning music, and I don't; I still buy the music I want to buy. But as a highly configurable personal radio and sampling station, it's been a useful engine of music acquisition and sampling -- I spend more time *exploring* music because it's cheap and easy to do so. In terms of computer applications that are actually relevant to my life on a daily basis, it's in the top five. The question of interest is: Will I still use Rhapsody if/when iTunes starts a streaming subscription service?